How many songs does it take to understand
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Puck takes a massive hit during a football match. This is the immediate aftermath. Set post the most recent season finale. Written for the glee angst meme at livejournal. Puck/Quinn. Puck and Finn friendship.


**How many songs does it take to understand...**

By Waltzmatildah

* * *

He doesn't see it coming. And in the grand scheme of things he's had worse.

Much worse.

But he hits the ground before he really has time to brace himself. Feels the back of his helmet ricochet off something solid. A boot perhaps. And for a second the whole world flashes to bright white.

Blinding. Eyes scrunched to shut and on fire inside his skull.

He's hauled to his feet surrounded by a murmur of voices that quickly separates from a background din into individual retorts and command-like orders to get his shit together.

_Get up, ya pussy..._

_Maybe his mohawk is broken..._

_Fuck sakes, Puckerman. We ain't got all day..._

He takes a few steps. Settles his eyes on Finn. Clamps his hands to either side of his helmet and pushes it back into place as a frown deepens under his best friend's face-mask.

"You okay?"

He thinks he says he's fine. Or that he will be fine. If everyone leaves him the hell alone. But for all he knows he's just ordered a lime slushie at the cafeteria and the sound of his voice swims a little in the back of his head as Coach wraps his thick fingers around his wrist.

Tight. The sight is oddly fascinating; draws his attention more than it usually would.

_Puckerman? You good?_

Or something like that. Lips move. Very little sound registers.

He's nods a reply that he thinks he should probably regret but doesn't because he's kind of numb and it sure beats the lightening that struck when he hit the ground.

* * *

He blinks.

Coach is gone. Finn is back. The voices of his teammates blur in and out as he turns his head. Loud when it's black. Whisper soft when it's white.

"You okay?"

Like he doesn't know what else to say.

He searches his catalogue. Knows he has the answer to that question tucked somewhere tight for safe keeping. Has an appropriate action to go right along with it.

"Get off me, asshole." A matching shove.

And he's not entirely convinced he picked the right option but it has the desired result. Finn backs up a step or two, cocks his head, reaches out fingers that twist in the metal cage of his helmet.

"You look like shit."

"You _are _shit." He thinks the catalogue has spilled a little. Responses are not where he's expecting them to be.

The appropriate words are getting harder and harder to find back there.

"Puck, you're not even talking right..."

They're walking now. He hopes Finn knows where they're going because he's pretty sure his mom asked him to get cat litter from Walmart but he can't find the keys to the truck so Finn will have to be designated driver.

But he remember then that Finn isn't even meant to be talking to him. Hates him with the power of a thousands suns. Something about booze and girlfriends and the worst kept secret of all time.

Someone shoves something at his chest. A ball. He flicks his eyes between it and Finn, creaks out a grin that feels only mildly absurd. Remembers now. Football.

"I got this, Finn. Let the Puckmeister show 'em how it's done..."

* * *

Ask him later and he'll deny it all.

* * *

They lose. No-one is surprised. Not his team-mates and not their opposition. Not the cheerioes and definitely not any of the rugged up spectators that sit huddled together on the wooden benches of the grandstand.

Puck is surprised. He thought they played really well. He's not sure which end they were kicking to in the finish, but he's convinced that they did a great job.

Best game of the season.

* * *

The locker rooms for this away game are disgusting. Like they're trying to defeat their opposition before they even get them on the pitch. Give them dysentery or hypothermia or some epic flesh eating fungus.

And that they're top of the ladder may give some semblance of credence to that thought.

If he knew what credence even meant.

Or semblance for that matter.

But disgusting or not, it all looks the same when you're face first in a toilet bowl and trying desperately not to lose your eyeballs along with what remains of this morning's oatmeal.

He'll remember to thank his mother for that one later. He fishes tylenol out from under discarded socks and a text book for a class that he can't ever remember attending. Left over painkillers from the twisted knee he didn't bother to tell anyone about.

The bottle tells him to take two. Tiny little writing that he has to squint to read. He figures two is for regular pain. Downs four with a palm full of tap water and slowly raises his head to level.

A face that he barely recognises gazes out at him through water spots and tarnish. Presses a thumb to the centre of its right eye, smudges it down towards his chin and tries not to scream as the agony is reflected inside his own skull.

* * *

The bus is parked on the other side of the lot. The distance keeps morphing. A few steps. Then hundreds. Finn is hovering. Offering to carry his bags. To give him a hand up the steps like he's some kind of pathetic invalid.

Like he's completely forgotten that Puck impregnated his girlfriend and gave his kid away as though it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to be traded for a can of cola.

He knocks the hand away with a shove that only just connects. Doesn't even need to look at Finn to understand the anger and the hurt reflected there.

The energy required to simply remain upright is immense.

And fading fast.

He slinks to his usual spot. Back row. Left corner. Slides along the bench seat 'til the side of his face is pressed against the ice cold window. Relishes the sticky cool against a cheek that he's half convinced is on actual fire...

Or something.

* * *

He contemplates more tylenol. Thinks he probably owes his liver a favour and so doesn't. But only just. Crosses his elbows over the back of the seat in front of him, shoots a fleeting smirk in Finn's direction, notices he's not looking anyway, and buries his forehead in his sleeves instead.

Thinks sleep is probably a bad idea, can't quite remember why, welcomes the silent relief nonetheless.

* * *

He doesn't remember arriving back at McKinley High. The faded outskirts of town. The locals that don't even bother to look up when the team bus trundles past.

There are sirens seems kind of strange. A reverse celebration. And he has a funny feeling that he's lying on the floor of the bus, or the pot-holed parking lot surface, or the roof of the gymnasium where he goes to drink wine coolers and look at porn.

When he should be in math.

A familiar voice is shouting, the words incoherent and dim in his ears. His fault or the speaker's, he's not entirely sure. He mumbles and stumbles out a _shut the hell up_. It trips on his lips, gets tangled around the tip of his tongue, barely makes it past his teeth.

And he's shocked when it actually works. When the whole world goes silent.

And white.

And maybe just a little pink at the edges.

When the pounding in his head goes still and the shrill ring in his ears leaks out and over his shaking shoulders.

When he feels fingers curl into his, warm and soft and _Quinn_... and...

* * *

After-wards, he gets bits and pieces of the story. From Quinn. From Finn.

Mostly from Rachel.

She finds the fact that someone drilled into his skull to save his life kind of fascinating. He finds it kind of fascinating that he even cares what she thinks.

This is new.

Quinn reassures him that it's probably just residual frontal lobe swelling. That he'll go back to thinking she's a pain in his backside in no time. He likes the sound of that and so doesn't bother with confirmation on the exact location of his frontal lobe.

It sounds dirty. He hopes it's dirty. Like it needs air quotes when it's vocalised.

_"Frontal lobe."_

_

* * *

_

Apparently there was an ambulance ride. He mentions hearing sirens, Quinn nods, smiles, curls her fingers into his.

_Oh._

He remembers that, too.

* * *

He doesn't remember vomiting all over Coach Tanaka's shoes.

Which is a shame.

* * *

He's been told Jacob Ben Israel captured the footage on his iPhone.

Which is awesome.

* * *

Ask Finn what happened and he'll say it was all his fault. Puck's no medical student but even he's pretty sure that's a stretch.

He cries when he's apologising. Which is some weird ass shit.

They've just emptied drugs of some kind into the tube that snakes its way down from high above his head and disappears under tape on the back of his hand. He guesses it's iin/i him but he can't really see the point of entry beyond all the tape and so he's okay with it.

For now.

And when Finn cries, he cries too. Blames the junk they just shot him up with. And the fact that he has a hole in his skull.

An actual hole.

It's as good an excuse as anything else.

It's as good an excuse as the daughter neither of them wanted but really and truly and completely _did _in the same breath.

* * *

His mohawk is gone. It's five days before he notices.

Quinn eyes him nervously as he runs fingertips over what has started to grow back. He offers her a shrug and a casual _whatever_. Pretends with a practiced ease that he doesn't give a shit.

He's fairly certain that she sees right through him.

* * *

Coach Tanaka wants to know if he'll be back for playoffs. Like they're even gonna _make _the playoffs. Deluded dumbass.

His mother is a little more definite in her opinion.

_Play football again and I **will **kill you._

Or something with a similar sentiment. But she says it with this weird look on her face. Like she's about to pee her pants, and he struggles to reconcile the venom of her words with the watery brown of her eyes and the way her fingers keep twisting in the sheet by his elbow.

* * *

The other glee members come. Two by two at first. Kurt and Mercedes. Tina and Artie. Brittany and Santana. Falling into natural pairs. Incongruent bookends, all of them.

Kurt brings silk pajamas. Dark blue. He wears them and pretends he's filming a porno. Makes lewd comments as Quinn rolls her eyes and tries not to grin back. Tina brings grapes that his mother uses to keep his little sister quiet.

She thinks Tina might just be an angel.

* * *

He itches to ask his mom if she's told his dad. About the hole in his head. About the blood that was drained out of him. About the fact that he was basically dead for three minutes.

One hundred and eighty seconds.

Lights out.

He itches to ask but never actually gets the words past half way out. Is too scared that the answer might be yes.

Too scared to know what that might actually mean.

* * *

Sometimes he thinks that Finn can read his mind. Or maybe he just read one of the gazillion scans that has filled the file at the end of his bed. Wonders what iI kinda miss my dad/i looks like on an MRI.

Sometimes he thinks that Finn can read his mind because he appears in the doorway with Kurt's father. Four days before they've promised to spring him back into the real world. It shoves his equilibrium a little to the left to see Finn with a dad.

Notices something that tastes a little bit like abandonment taint the tip of his tongue. They don't do dads. Aside from football, it was the only thing they really had in common. Half way through the visit he starts to get a funny feeling that Finn is in the middle of pimping out his new family member.

Which is just about the strangest point in this whole two week period.

He offers a smile that he hopes looks tired. Brings out the slow blink he perfected in the high school sick room and counts in sevens 'til they leave.

* * *

They have an impromptu glee club meeting in his room the night before he's discharged. Rachel brings his guitar.

He could kiss her.

Guesses his _"frontal lobe"_ must still be a little swollen.

Quinn sits next to him on the bed. Solid against the side she's barely left since that day she curled her fingers into his on the pebbled parking lot surface.

They haven't talked about what it meant then.

Or what it might mean tomorrow.

* * *

Finn is the last to leave. Kurt and Mercedes are waiting for him in the hall. His guitar sits discarded in the corner. He plays chords in his head so he doesn't have to look his best friend in the eye.

_I'm sorry..._

Repeated so many times it's all starting to blur together.

_Not your fault..._

And even Puck's not sure that he means it anymore...

Or whether they're still talking about the subdural haema-whatever that almost killed him. Or whose line should be whose anyway.

Figures, in some karmic balancing act, that they're kind of even now.


End file.
